Auckland Philharmonia's Bard to the Bone set off theatrically with Shakespearian snippets from Henry V to Twelfth Night echoing through the Aotea Centre, introducing the feuding families from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
Throughout the evening, conductor Wyn Davies had the full measure of the music, and actor Stuart Devenie dispensed
stirring soliloquies and speeches, even if it was distracting when he switched from MC to a Shakespearian character.
Devenie the MC got a roar of laughter when he quoted Oscar Wilde's Miss Prism on fiction and non-fiction; elsewhere, quips about Hamlet's melancholy being today's clinical depression, or Henry V's battle speech the greatest team-building pep talk from a chief executive, seemed jejune.
Most effective, dramatically and orchestrally, was the ghost scene from Hamlet. Shostakovich lays a growling bed of fury under the sinister revelations of Hamlet's father.
And there was some other classic film music about, including Walton's lilting Touch Her Soft Lips and Part, elegantly delivered by the strings.
Berlioz had the most substantial representation of the evening and a well-sprung Beatrice and Benedict overture showed the orchestra fighting fit for the work's rhythmic tussles.
While baritone Grant Doyle acquitted himself breezily enough in the Queen Mab aria, propelled by a gossamer accompaniment, he strained in Thomas' O Vin, Dissipe la Tristesse and his final line was all but obliterated by the orchestra.
Cole Porter's I've Come to Wive it Wealthily in Padua proves that the baritone is no Alfred Drake or Howard Keel and, in a shiveringly dramatic duet from Ross Harris' King Lear, Doyle was too vocally lightweight. And, alas, a tuxedo does not go with madness on the heath.
As Cordelia, soprano Jessica Pratt revealed the cool control that earlier had lent an inner truth to both Verdi's Willow Song and Haydn's She Never Told Her Love, the latter sensitively scored by Harris.
Indeed, the involvement of Harris, now in his second term as the AP's resident composer, shows yet again the orchestra's commitment to ensure that the voice of the New Zealand composer is not overlooked. Bravo!
